Silent Peer Assessment, a form of
collaborative classroom assessment, worked extremely well with my small Year 6
class. The children were excited about this, as I had told them that it was
done in secondary school and that I felt that as a class they were ready to try
it.

This assessment was carried out as an end of
topic activity. It enabled me to monitor individual progress effectively.

The children had covered: means of transport,
the present of aller in all its forms, places in town (in year 5 but recapped
earlier in the year), planets (year 4, but recapped orally earlier in the topic
of transport with 'funky' means of transport), weather (at the start of each
class) and expressing view points (worked on over the last two years orally
mainly in spontaneous group speaking activities) and simple link words are
posted around the classroom.

The children had plenty of practice on this
topic, orally and via reading and listening comprehensions. We had also played
Cluedo using @dominic_mcg's version of the game presented at #ililc3.

Today's class had a written emphasis.
Last week we looked at some letters written by French children about the means of transport they use to attend school and various venues according to the
weather and to where they live. They had also worked out the composition of
these letters: contrasting weather, change of means of transport according to
weather, change of venue, expressing viewpoint. These clear instructions were
then listed on a PowerPoint for them to refer back to if needed (a tick sheet
would have been fine or the original wording from last class if used on a Smartboard) and each child had their personal file to refer back to the work covered
in the past if needed.

The silent peer assessment was then explained:

1. Reflect on task individually for 4-5 minutes (timer on screen)

2. When time
is up and instructed by the teacher, with partner conduct silent conversation
on Post-it notes provided (7-10 minutes) (timer on screen).

A5 Post-it notes were used.

Comments and corrections were made by children
in pairs with no other intervention. They used different colour pens: one child
writes in blue, one in black or with a pencil):

For example:

Add 'quand' (in front of il fait beau)

Correction on the spelling of 'je vais' by
partner

Partner added other form of verb

Some added a colour to means of transport

Then I asked the children to go round the
class looking at other people's work and see if they could add more to their
own writing.

Once back in their place I asked them individually to write on a new Post-it their final sentences (referencing back to
their pair work) and put them in their exercise books. This worked really well with this particular
class and I will use this method again as they gained so much from it.

Here are pictures of some of the completed pieces of work:

Sylvie is from Montpellier and trained as a 14+ teacher. After 20 years in the secondary sector teaching and examining at GCSE, AS and A2 level she became MFL coordinator in two local primary schools. She now teaches French in KS1 and KS2 but has kept an Adult French Literature class. She also teaches for the Petite Ecole Kentoise, a charity that provides a Saturday morning school to multilingual children.